


All Things Go

by LadyFangs



Category: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Mirror Universe
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 04:04:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13403088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyFangs/pseuds/LadyFangs
Summary: Michael Burnham tries to cope in the aftermath of horrible revelations. Though the crew of the Discovery has returned to their universe...the shadows of the other still hold them prisoner.(May get expanded into a larger fic...we shall see where Discovery goes in this fabulous Mirror Universe).





	All Things Go

He is silent as he watches Michael go about her duties, shoulders squared, chin high, back straight. She appears no different than usual. But he knows better.

It’s in her eyes.

The way they drift across the bridge, to the empty station.

Still, she does not remark on it.

Instead, she performs her work with the practiced ease of a competent officer—the commander she no longer is.

A reminder of all that she has lost. What she continues to lose.

The empty chair a reminder of all they, as a crew, have lost together.

Death is all around.

It is silent on the bridge, save for the whirring and chirping of the ships systems.

There are holes that cannot be filled.

Grief that cannot be erased.

He knows this more than anyone. He has seen it, lived it—now twice over.

Engineering.

Tactical.

Medical.

The ghosts now stalk Discovery’s halls.

He wonders if Burnham sees the shadows as clearly as he does.

.

.

The quarters she stands in are now empty. He had given her access to come and go as she pleased. She has not been here since their return. And she wonders why she is here now.

Everything is still, exactly as they had left it.

His clothes, still on the floor. The bed, still unmade.

When she inhales, she smells him all around, and when she wraps her arms around herself, she can feel him holding her.

It hurts.

If she had known then what she does now, would she have done the same things?

The place she in emotionally is…strange. She vacillates between anger so hot it burns like fire in her body, to a grief so deep all she can do is curl up, and close in on herself.

But Michael has never cried.

She has not cried since she was a child, but she wonders, not for the first time, what she has done to deserve this. There has been nothing to prepare her. Physical pain is temporary. But this, is lingering.

She has loved, and been in love and given herself honestly and completely and he had loved her—told her he loved her…only for the façade to shatter like the mirror they had become trapped in. The darker of the other that lives within all of them.

Ash couldn’t beat it. He couldn’t hide it anymore.

And she had enabled him—covering for his weakness, sheltering his splintering self, all the while feeling an incipient dread that continued to grow, and grow…

He had revealed himself to be what she never imagined—her friend, her lover, and her enemy.

The doors to the quarters open suddenly, and she turns abruptly, startled out of her own thoughts.

The Captain.

 “I thought I’d find you here,” he says, stepping through and casting a quick glance around the room before coming to face her.

They stand mere inches apart. She tilts her head up, meeting his gaze and wondering why, of all the times, he comes to her now. Here.

Lorca sighs at the questions he sees in her face. So many, and he doesn’t quite know where to start, or how.

 This is something he had never factored into his plan. That she would fall in love.

“Why couldn’t you let me be?” She asks. Calm—to an untrained ear, but to his, there’s a slight tremble…

“Why couldn’t you leave me where I was?”

“Because I needed you,” he tells her. “It never would have worked otherwise.”

Still, so much he does not reveal, though what he says is true…to an extent. There is much this Michael does not know. She does not know that his need turned to want. And his want became obsession, desire and…possession. Best to leave that unaddressed.

“You used _me_ ,” she says. “You used _us_. You’ve used this crew. This ship. _Everything_.”

“I didn’t want to,” he says, hoping that she will understand.

“Please, Michael,” he does not address her formally—they are not speaking as commander and subordinate, but as a man and a woman and he needs her to understand why he’s done this, “you have to know it was the only way.”

The first tear falls from her eyes. Then another. He reaches out, but she pulls away, angry and hurt. He knows that his betrayal is of another sort—promises he made to her, that she now feels he has broken.

She cannot see him for what he is, only what he’s done, and Lorca knows the blame for their collective circumstances lies with him.

Burnham did not ask to be here. He brought her. His Michael is dead. This one is an innocent, and he has taken that away from her. Robbed her of it. For that, he is sorry.

But he has never apologized. Apologies are for the weak, and weakness makes you prey, in his universe. So he doesn’t say it. Instead, he reaches for the Michael that isn’t his, the one who loved someone else, and this time, when he pulls her close, she starts to cry.

Michael Burnham’s don’t cry.

 But this one does.

He holds her tight, as she sobs into his arms, telling him how she hates him, how she wants to go back—go away…anywhere but here…

“I can’t take you back.” He tells her, settling them on the bed.

 “Understand…” Lorca swallows before starting again.

“I’m sorry you lost him,” he says. “But you have to know he loved you. And… he tried.”

She thinks he’s talking about Ash.

He’s really talking about himself.


End file.
